The Texas Rangers have lost two straight games, and a loss on Monday night against the Indians would mark a third straight series loss.
Rookie starter Nick Martinez will take the mound on Monday for the Rangers, looking to snap that skid and also to bounce back from a couple of rough outings for the 23-year-old who, when the season began, had no real ambitions of being in the big leagues and was suddenly thrown into the Opening Day rotation when Yu Darvish slept wrong.
Martinez is 1-2 with a 3.22 ERA and threw struggled for a second straight outing on Wednesday going 5 1/3 innings allowing six runs and nine hits with one strikeout in a 6-5 loss to the Orioles. He believes he's made the proper adjustments to bounce back from two outings when he's combined to give 10 runs on 18 hits in 11 innings.
"There are a lot of things to learn from my last outing, and a lot of things to work on also," Martinez told MLB.com. "I've been working on them and am definitely taking the right steps towards fixing them. Not a lot of things, just little tweaks, and I think working on them these past five days — I think I'm ready."
The Rangers need him to be.
